Name: Dan
Email:
Bio: The third generation of my family to enter the field of media, I’ve held prior positions at the San Francisco Chronicle (systems director), The New York Post (production and labor), and The Star Ledger (advertising). Now I strive to strengthen BurrellesLuce relationships with content providers and substantially increase the number of licensing agreements with publishers, producers, syndicates, and digital media creators, as senior vice president of content management. I also spearhead efforts that have resulted in significant growth of the BurrellesLuce copyright compliance program. LinkedIn: dschaible; Facebook: BurrellesLuce; Twitter: @BurrellesLuce
Posts by Dan Schaible:
The Kindling Crisis …
January 13th, 2009No, I am not referring to the Amazon reading device.
Actually, I was reflecting on an experience I had this past weekend while getting a fire started in our living room fireplace. The first thing I reached for was the short stack of newspapers held back from the recycle police to assist in the ignition phase of my un-eco practice of enjoying a wood fire. It was then that I experienced a bit of panic realizing that in the future I may have to rely on fatwood kindling purchased from LL Bean instead of The Washington Post. The is a simple by-product of a relatively inexpensive bonding experience with one of my trusted news sources. The former, well, it’s definitely going to cost me.
Not only will they no longer provide me with kindling, but I won’t have any fish wrappers either. (In my 30 years in the operations side of the media business, the expression when we ran late in production was always that we were printing “fish wrappers”).
Seriously, though, this expected trend of newspapers forgoing ink on paper does present another unfortunate consequence. What is becoming more common is issuing newspapers fewer days per week – some publications have decided to print four days out of seven, for example. This presents an interesting evolution: originally newspapers had transitioned from printing one or two days a week to printing seven days per week. The New York Post finally started Sunday publication in 1996. Nowadays, if they don’t fold, perhaps we will see papers in print only on Sundays.
In looking for the bright spot, it occurred to me that, as I have said here before, newspapers will never go away entirely. We may need to come up with a new name, though, because I still have a problem with talking about an “online newspaper.” As there’s no paper involved, it’s a bit of an oxymoron.
The real point to my little lament isn’t kindling or fish wrappers. Rather it lies in the difference between publishing and printing. Printing is merely a delivery channel that is preferred by an ever-decreasing number of consumers. This move away from print is decidedly generational. However, consumers still need the format of the print publication, even online. This is evidenced by the growing success of “online readers” and services such as Zinio, PressDirect, the aforementioned Kindle and those based on Microsoft’s Vista technology and used by The New York Times, Hearst and others. These devices allow consumers to view the publications in the traditional print format, but offer the ability to manipulate the views and navigation to accommodate personal preference. I do believe this signals the media’s is alignment with the consumer’s need for reliable news and information, and demonstrates their shift to an agnostic position on delivery channel and even format.
So, I guess I will place my LL Bean order and settle in with my Kindle to read The New York Post by a roaring fire.
Yes Virginia, There Will Be Print.
December 11th, 2008Some very large storm clouds hover above the media world. In some places, the skies have already opened. It will, to no one’s surprise, get worse according to the smart folks at GroupM and ZenithOptimedia. They reported their predictions for the advertising spend for the next year at the annual media conference sponsored by UBS. Ad revenue is, currently, the lifeblood of US media. Based on their numbers, the clouds will not clear until sometime the year after next, in 2010.
The storm has resulted in 30,000 media sector jobs lost this year to date as reported by Ad Age. And there’s the little matter of publications going online only and reducing their newsstand frequency. Oh, and Mr. Zell has steered the Tribune Company into bankruptcy. There will be fewer publications and less clutter on the newsstands. At the same time, the online clutter will grow. Clearly, the landscape is ripe for revolution since the media moguls missed the opportunity to take the evolution route.
The are some small breaks in those clouds for the print media. Case in point: people who get information from print media spend more time engaged with the publication than those individuals who get their info from an online source … and advertisers know this. Granted, advertising revenue has shrunk and will continue to do so at a nearly alarming rate, in part because of the economic debacle around us.
As for Mr. Zell, it must be said that poor timing with the financial markets aside, his grating castigations of the way media companies were being run is showing some merit. (I said some.) As for the bankruptcy, it will play out along with the sale of the Miami Herald, the Rocky Mountain News, the San Diego Tribune and those to come.
These companies will rework their business models and continue to provide value in edited content. Some may close. Remember though, that with just the print version of these publications, we are talking about five million plus readers who spend a lot of time with “their” paper each day and advertisers who still have things to sell to them.
So, yes, there will be print because print still engages and delivers an influential audience.
Where’s The Audience?
November 19th, 2008Last Thursday, the American Press Institute hosted a CEO Summit sponsored by the fine folks at the McCormick Foundation. (The Foundation is accepting bids for their PR business, by the way.) Forty-nine leaders from the top newspaper media companies met behind closed doors in Reston, Virginia to discuss an “Industry in Crisis”. The motivation for these influencers to show up en masse continues to be chronicled in their own publications, such as a recent AP story in The Wall Street Journal citing continued pressure on stock prices from eroding ad revenue. To say that newspaper advertising revenues are continuing to shrink at an alarming rate would be cliché, so instead I will say that they are decreasing at a speed that has even their noisiest critics silenced in amazement.
The sad truth is that print advertising dollars turn into dimes online. Online revenue just won’t support the costs of the traditional newspaper delivery channels. The audiences have moved but the newspaper companies have been stuck for a while, unable to get mentally divorced enough from being newspapers to understand and react. The industry puts all kinds of energy into developing younger audiences for the newspaper delivery channel, instead of just delivering information over whichever channel the audiences choose to use. I know this is easier said than done, but starting work on a mental move towards being delivery channel agnostic would be a good thing.
So what is the connection to our world? PR professionals use newspapers to impact audiences. The good news is a larger audience than ever is accessing information created by newspaper companies. Unsurprisingly, younger segments are more likely to choose digital channels over print. What is really crazy and, oh so scary to these media companies is that the growing digital audiences has become proactive. They are not just signing on as information receptacles; they want to “talk about” the information. The new challenge for PR professionals is being able to listen in a more profound way, and then respond – and promptly. Are you ready?
